"Lester Del Rey - Early Del Rey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Del Rey Lester)

my life as reading and working. I was always small and thin, but I managed to
be chosen pitcher in baseball or quarterback in football for our informal back
lot games. In winter, skating and skiing were constant sources of pleasure.
And I managed to indulge in at least the normal amount of damfool youthful
follies!

In the last year of high school, I began writingтАФbut hardly for the usual
reason. I had managed to save up ten dollars for an old Remington #2
typewriterтАФthe kind that required the typist to lift the cylinder to see what
was written underneath. And the company that sold it had graciously included a
ten-cent manual of touch typing, which I mastered in a few weeks. That left me
with the problem of finding something to do with the machine I'd coveted so
long. I solved it by inventing stories to type outтАФincluding a very long
novel. But I never took them seriously, or bothered to submit them. I'd read
too much good fiction not to know that my results were pretty dreadful,
despite what my friends dutifully told me. The stories were fun and they
improved my typing. That was enough reward.

But they led to some surprising other results. I never expected to go to
college. Few people from my background in those days went beyond high school.
Besides, while my grades were good, they weren't exceptional. But my old
friend, the librarian, had seen some of my fiction. She was determined that I
must go on to further education. I have no idea how long she worked at her
project, but she succeeded. She traced down a long-forgotten uncle of mine who
edited a weekly labor newspaper in Washington, D.C., and secured his ready
promise that I could live with him. Then she managed to secure a partial
scholarship for me at George Washington University. So, in 1931, at the age of
sixteen, I headed eastward in search of higher education. I never went back,
as it turned out.

I'm afraid the eventual outcome must have disappointed that rather remarkable
lady. Living with my uncle was an altogether happy experience, and I enjoyed
being in WashingtonтАФparticularly when I discovered that the Library of
Congress had all those books that had been only titles to me before. There
were also newsstands near me where I could get all the gaudy, marvelous
science fiction magazines. But my college education fizzled out.

I simply dropped out after two years. Except for the science courses, I found
most of the studies just a repeat of what I'd learned in high school. And
generally, I discovered that it took me a year in school to learn what I could
master by myself in a few weeks. So I quit and went to work as a junior
billing clerk for a plumbing company тАФa decision which I still regard as one
of the best I've ever made.

I wasn't exactly a success as a billing clerk. I got along fine with the use
of the Comptometer, as with any machine; I wasn't as seriously devoted to the
rest of the job. But I coasted along for a few years before the company caught
up with me and let me go. Then I drifted along, selling magazines, working in
restaurants, and so on. My major achievement was becoming a well-known science
fiction fan, for whatever that was worth. I wrote long letters to the editors